


A Perfect Storm

by ClaudiaRain



Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV)
Genre: F/M, Family, Friendship, Humor, Hurt/Comfort, Love, Thunderstorms, Timestorms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-21
Updated: 2016-11-11
Packaged: 2018-07-25 19:16:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 14,594
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7544710
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ClaudiaRain/pseuds/ClaudiaRain
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After a complicated mission, the ship passes through the timeline as it corrects itself and everyone has to figure out how to deal with it. Sara finds it more difficult than the others.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> My short, light-hearted break from Causality! This is set in a semi-AU season 1 universe where the whole team's together indefinitely and everyone's alive (and always will be).
> 
> Thank you, Tavyn, for your wonderful feedback and letting me take you away from your on-going story!

Sara has no idea what startled her awake.

She'd been sleeping peacefully (or as peaceful as she gets, nowadays) when she'd gone from her now rapidly-fading dream – that she can't remember – to sitting upright in bed, expecting to find some kind of threat or intruder.

Her room is pitch black, but she'd know if anyone was lurking there. She'd hear them moving or breathing –  _no one_  is as silent as Sara. Perhaps the only person who could hide from her in here would be an alternate timeline version of herself (now there's a disturbing thought simply because it's an actual possibility).

"Gideon, lights at five percent," she whispers, a direct result of her previous thought. She feels silly even as she says it, but who's going to know? Gideon won't tell on her. She hopes.

She squints against the lighting which proves there's no one in her room. Right, she knew that already. She tells Gideon to turn the lights back off, relieved at the return of the darkness.

Sara's good at coping with fear, even better at dealing with panic, and she forces her breathing to near-silence as she takes in the hum of the ship around her. She can tell they're traveling, but she has no idea where they're going. That knowledge doesn't bother her as much as it should because she's come to trust Rip…somewhat. Not fully, but enough that she believes he won't lead them to their deaths in the middle of the night.

So what had woken her?

She listens carefully for anything out of the ordinary, whether elsewhere on the ship or outside of it. She counts to ten. Twenty. Fifty. One hundred.

Nothing.

She exhales slowly and lies back down, staring up toward the ceiling that she can't see in the blackness.

Maybe it had been a nightmare that jarred her out of sleep? Those have never been rare in her life. It's odd that she doesn't remember it, though – the harder she tries, the further away it seems. It probably wasn't what woke her, either, since she's had significantly fewer nightmares since joining this team.

Eventually she allows her eyes to shut again. She's determined to get more sleep that she desperately needs. She and the others had been up for nearly two days straight on a particularly grueling mission that had involved the timeline changing a half dozen times. They'd finally stabilized things, but it had been close.

It's always close, isn't it?

No matter, they won, like usual. And now she finally gets to rest after –

Rumbling in the distance has Sara half-sitting up again. Strange. That had sounded almost like –

The ship shakes and tilts under her, enough that she slides to the opposite side of the bed and has to dig her feet into the mattress to keep from going over the edge. It takes a second to realize that can only mean one thing.

She leaps out of bed and rushes to the hallway, wincing when bright lights assault her the moment the doors to her room open (and why hasn't Rip installed some kind of dimmer system by now?). She looks up and down the corridor, but no one's out there. "Gideon, where are the alarms? We're under attack!"

"No, we are not, Ms. Lance."

Before she can question the AI, Ray steps out of his room which is further down the hall and on the opposite side. He looks around groggily before meeting her eyes. "Sara?"

"Ray, what's –"

More rumbling sounds above them, below them – completely surrounding them. The ship vibrates again, less severely this time, and Sara presses a hand to the wall.

"That sounds like thunder," Ray says.

"And feels like an earthquake," Sara adds, since they're apparently stating the obvious.

The door directly across the hall from Sara opens to reveal Leonard, rubbing his eyes and looking around in bewilderment. "Some of us are trying to sleep here. What have you all screwed up this time?" He sounds entirely unaffected given what's going on around them. Like usual.

"No one has done anything," Gideon says. "We are currently in the midst of a series of temporal storms."

"Really?!" Rays sounds  _way_  too excited and that's Sara's first hint that she's not going to like whatever a 'temporal storm' is. "I've read about those! They're incredibly rare to experience firsthand."

"Should I bother asking, or will your no doubt unbearably dull explanation cause me to fall back to sleep while standing here?" Leonard asks him.

Sara leaps in before Ray can take issue with the question – or worse, decide to start explaining. "Gideon, where's the captain?"

"On the bridge," Gideon answers.

She heads in that direction, absently listening to Ray and Leonard bickering behind her, something about crossing timelines and other things she's sure she wouldn't care about even if she heard them in clearer detail. The ship stutters once on their walk, sending her stumbling into Ray's path and he automatically grabs her shoulder to steady her.

"You're welcome," Ray says to her back when she shrugs him off, irritated that she'd needed his help at all.

She scowls at him over her shoulder and Leonard laughs. "Someone's not happy the storms woke her up."

"Shut it," she warns, "or you won't be sleeping any more tonight, either."

"Promise?" he asks, slyly.

"Oh, I promise," she swears, barely biting back her smile (she never manages to get as annoyed as she wants him to think). Ray looks back and forth between them before shaking his head slightly.

They've reached the bridge and Rip greets them cheerfully. "I see the storms roused you! Gideon and I were just conferring on the best navigational strategy to get out of them." He's at the center console with Kendra, the two of them studying what appears to be a map that keeps changing in real-time.

The only other person on the bridge is Jax, strapped into one of the chairs and clinging to the restraints as if they're the only thing keeping him alive. He doesn't look that good.

"You okay?" Sara asks, kneeling next to Jax's chair. She's painfully aware that she's hoping no one will ask  _her_  current state of well-being.

"Not exactly," he mutters. As if to prove his point, thundering in the distance is followed shortly by the ship rolling. It's weak compared to the times before, but it's enough for him to swallow hard. "I was on a class trip for a whale watch once and there was a storm and – let's say I almost jumped overboard it was so awful. This feels a hell of a lot like that."

"You fly through the air all the time, how is  _this_ bothering you?" Rip asks, somewhat callously, as if he can't possibly understand the distress of their youngest team member.

"Flying is something I can control," Jax mumbles. "This…not so much."

Sara finds it interesting that she's not the only one who's had a terrible experience at sea. "We'll be fine," she assures him, battling her own feelings of illness and unease. Her issues have little to do with their current situation and more to do with remnants left over from her near-death experience a decade earlier.

She gets unsteadily to her feet and casts a glance at Rip. He's now in deep conversation with Kendra and neither of them appear too alarmed. That has to be a good thing, right? It means they (most likely) aren't on the verge of imminent death.

Too bad she doesn't  _feel_ as safe as her rational mind is arguing that she is. She holds onto the back of Jax's chair so tightly that her knuckles turn white and she has to purposely ease her grip.

"Hey,  _captain_ ," Leonard says, infusing the title with his usual mocking lack of respect and snapping his fingers at Rip, "why don't you explain what you've gotten us into?"

Sara can tell Leonard's unhappy about something – perhaps he's not as unaffected by the storms as she'd initially thought?

"The situation is not my fault," Rip insists, pointing them to the screen he's been studying, and Sara moves closer to get a better look. "We're in the middle of –"

"Who doesn't love a good temporal storm!" Mick exclaims merrily as he strolls onto the bridge, waving around a whiskey bottle.

Jax weakly raises a hand. "Uh, I don't."

"Really?" Mick asks, baffled. "I find them pretty soothing."

"It feels like we're under attack!" Sara almost shouts.

"Exactly," Mick tells her. "Isn't it fantastic? It's bringing back a lot of fond memories for me."

Sara's going to respond to that with something about how crazy he is, but the ship unexpectedly tips and she hits the edge of the center console; the pain distracts her from what she'd been about to say.

"You are crazy," Leonard tells his partner, and Sara nods in agreement as she rubs her side.

Mick shrugs and then holds up his bottle. "I also come bearing unfortunate news: thanks to the storms, I spilled most of this last bottle all over my bed."

"We're so sorry," Leonard says, sarcastically. He's copied Sara's idea and moved to the ring of chairs, holding onto the back of one of them to ensure he'll keep his balance if things get out of control again.

"I accept the condolences," Mick says, slapping his partner on the back and then going to the console to tap his nearly empty bottle on it. Repeatedly. Annoyingly. "This is going on your tab, Hunter."

"What tab?"

"My expenses! You're somewhere around…what is it now, Gideon?"

"$4,235.79."

Rip's astonished – he'd half-expected that to be a joke and not something Mick's been meticulously tracking. "What exactly do I owe you money for?"

"Well, my services are free – lucky you – but I'm passing along the costs of furnishings for my room, food and alcohol, various other amenities…"

"I don't owe you anything! Gideon provides all necessities for you to live comfortably on the ship."

"Right and I'm not talking about the basics, I'm talking about extra stuff I pay for that should be reimbursed."

"I'm not reimbursing you for drinking every night," Rip's sounding increasingly put-out.

"Well, I think I work better when I'm drinking," Mick argues, "but we can negotiate on the specifics."

"Can we discuss this another time?" Leonard asks. "I still don't understand what's going on." As if to illustrate his point, the lights start flickering.

"I already told you, it's a temporal storm," Rip explains. "Or more precisely, a series of them. They occur when the timeline changes to a new reality. The thunder you're hearing is different versions of the timeline colliding with each other while it corrects itself – it also causes temporal waves that throw the ship around. The more things were altered in the timeline, the worse the storms can get. Remember our last mission and all the changes that occurred before we could ensure a final, stable timeline? This is a direct result of that."

"Why haven't we experienced these storms before?" Sara asks.

"Like I was trying to explain to Len earlier," Ray jumps in, "they're rare and usually pretty easily avoidable. Temporal storms are essentially time waves that spread out chaotically in random directions when the timeline changes. I'd heard that they sound similar to Earth's thunderstorms, but I've never been lucky enough to hear one up close before."

Kendra's remembering an obscure fact she must have read somewhere. "I thought there was no sound in space?"

"You'd be right," Ray says cheerily, "but sound travels  _in_  the time waves. At least, that's the best theory anyone's come up with. Now, the main issue for us is that instead of being on the surface of a planet – like Earth – and hearing a storm up in the atmosphere, we're in the very space where the storms are occurring. Think of how storms and turbulence can affect airplanes."

Sara has no idea how everyone can talk about this so casually, as if there's absolutely nothing to be concerned about. "You mean how both of those things can  _take down_ airplanes?"  _Or yachts_. She shivers at her sudden barrage of memories and catches Leonard's eye. She realizes in that moment, brief though it is, that he knows exactly what she's thinking.

"Okay, so they can occasionally take down airplanes," Ray admits, "but we're in space so the most these storms can do is toss us around for a little while. The ship's gravity function is intact, so we don't have to worry about ending up on the ceiling, at least. There's no actual  _danger_ to us at the moment." Perhaps he senses they need more reassurance. "Right, Gideon?"

"Correct, Mr. Palmer."

"Unless the ship disintegrates," Jax supplies, voice wavering slightly.

"The ship's not going to disintegrate," Ray says firmly…then less firmly, "I don't think."

"You all have to be making this up," Len says, skeptically. "I've never heard of anything like what you're talking about – I mean, temporal storms?" He directs his annoyance at Hunter. "Wouldn't this be the kind of danger you'd warn us about, oh,  _before_ we boarded your time traveling spaceship?"

"Whenever I try to talk to you about anything relating to time travel theory you just turn and walk away," Rip reminds him.

"Well…that's not exactly…alright, you may have a point," Len concedes. "In my defense, your style of explaining things is extremely dry and leaves a lot to be desired. It basically rivals Palmer's."

"Heyyy…" Ray complains, the word pretty much tapering out because he doesn't actually have anything to say in his own defense.

Rip marvels at how easily this team gets off-topic and directs them back to the subject at hand. "Mr. Palmer was correct when he said that these storms are usually easy to steer around. That's why we've never encountered one on this ship, though I have run into them occasionally in the past. As for why we're in this situation, want to tell them, Gideon?"

"In this particular instance, the ripple effects from the timeline rapidly changing so many times proved too substantial to avoid with absolute certainty," their AI explains. "Time waves are random by nature, so I had to calculate the route where we were least likely to be affected. This was the best option with a 99.3% likelihood I could evade them. Unfortunately, we fell into the .7% and I could not avoid every storm."

Sara thinks that sounds about right for their luck. "Why can't you maneuver us out of here?"

Rip answers her instead of Gideon. "Time works differently when you're caught in fluctuating space like this. We're basically  _in_  the timeline as it changes. The ship itself is built with safeguards to protect us from time anomalies, but we can't just…fly away, so to speak. While the ship can technically escape the area in what is objectively just a few minutes, since we are caught within time that is swiftly adjusting to its final state, it will  _feel_ like hours to us. Until it's over, we'll be feeling the effects off and on, mostly in waves."

Tremors from the storm cause the floor to vibrate under Sara's stocking-clad feet, but she's too distracted by Rip's explanation to even register the sensation. " _Hours_?"

Rip's reluctance to continue is evident in the way he hesitates and then speaks abnormally slowly. "Yes, well… Anywhere from two to…ten hours?"

"Ten hours!" Sara looks around for something she can throw at him – too bad everything is bolted down.

"Only an estimate," he says quickly, sensing her growing anger. "It will probably be substantially less than that. All we can do is wait."

"Do I even want to hear an explanation about why it will feel like hours when it's technically only a few minutes to get us out of here?" Len asks.

"No," Ray says, "probably not. Unless you want to devote the rest of your night to delving into general relativity theories as they relate to space-time? I recently read a fascinatingly speculative article –"

"I'm good," Len interrupts. "As scary as this may be, I'm actually going to take your word for it."

"And you guys are sure that the ship can handle this kind of stress?" Kendra's clearly worried, especially after Jax's earlier suggestion about 'disintegration'.

"Oh, most definitely," Rip says. "I mean, think of what we've gone through already in this ship. Yes indeed, the Waverider is as sturdy as –" he breaks off when the ship veers to the side and there's the distinct sound of metal bending. Sara nearly falls into Jax's lap, but manages to grab the edge of the center console at the last second.

"Sturdy, you say?" She looks over at Leonard, the two of them silently asking each other how much they trust that the ship isn't going to literally fall apart around them. Len nods slightly, as if to confirm Rip and Ray's assertions, and Sara instantly feels better. (She shouldn't, because he's obviously less informed on this topic than the others, but she can't deny his reassurance eases her mind – even if it's only because he trusts that the other two aren't lying to them about the possible danger they're in.)

"We haven't died yet," Rip tells them, as if that fact alone is all their team needs to stop worrying about the storms.

The lights blink off and on again.

"Oh yeah," Leonard says, "that's giving me complete confidence in the stability of the ship. Surely the wiring being affected isn't a substantial problem."

"Minor technical glitch," Rip waves him off. "We might have to deal with a few more before the storms end."

"A few more?" Kendra repeats, warily.

"Fluctuations in the lights, gravity, life support systems…" Rip looks around expectantly, disappointed in their unamused expressions. "Really, people, that last one was a joke!"

Len stares at their captain. "We might suffocate? You're right, Hunter, that's hilarious."

"Actually, the lack of oxygen could make us euphoric to the point that we  _think_  everything is hilarious," Ray informs them. "You know, until we pass out. And die."

"What?!" Jax throws his head back against the seat.

Sara knows better than to dwell on that insanely terrifying possibility. "And we'll have to deal with hours of this?" She already knows the answer, she's just hoping it might change this time around.

Rip glances at the continuously changing map in front of him. "I'm afraid so."

Leonard wonders if there's anything that could make things easier on them. "Gideon, can't you buffer us from the effects of the storms?"

"I already am, Mr. Snart."

_Oh_ , Sara thinks,  _that's just perfect_. And now she's curious... "What would it feel like if you weren't?"

"You would not find it pleasant," Gideon states.

"What makes you think we find  _this_ pleasant?" Len demands.

Gideon must not appreciate his attempt at humor. "I can temporarily allow you to feel the real effects if you'd prefer?"

"Hell yeah!" Mick yells enthusiastically.

"No!" Rip, Sara, and Kendra shout simultaneously.

"I think this is it," Jax wheezes, as Kendra squeezes his shoulder in quiet sympathy. "Tell my mom I love her and that I went out a hero, okay?"

"You –" Len points at him, "– have lived through much worse than this. And I don't mean as Firestorm, I mean dealing with  _these_ people on a daily basis for over a year now."

"Yourself included?" Jax shoots back, almost smiling, before suddenly seeming stricken. "Oh no, was his joke slightly funny or am I becoming hypoxic? Gideon, are the oxygen levels falling?"

"The oxygen levels are normal," Gideon reports.

"Take deep breaths, kid," Mick advises. "Try to enjoy as much air as you can before everything goes sideways."

Rip presses his palms into his eyes as if maybe he can erase their presence if he tries hard enough. "Mr. Rory, if you could refrain from –"

"Don't get me wrong," Mick cuts him off, "things going sideways is always the best part of my week. If the rest of you learned to enjoy it as much as I do, you'd have a lot more fun around here."

Leonard can't hide his amusement as he and Mick share a knowing look. His next question is addressed to their team as a whole: "What should we do for the next…ten hours?"

"You could drink," Mick suggests, holding up his now empty bottle – he'd finished it off over the course of their conversation.

"It's…" Sara realizes she doesn't actually know the time.

"1:37 am," Leonard supplies, knowing exactly what she'd wanted to say.

"You see?" Mick asks rhetorically. "The night is still young."

Rip sends him another disapproving look – he might as well make it his permanent expression for the night (or week, or month, or…eternity). "You all have three options: strap yourselves in on the bridge like Mr. Jefferson; go wait it out in your rooms, since lying down will make you less prone to feeling the effects of the storms; or head to the Med Bay and allow Gideon to sedate you."

" _Sedation_?" Leonard finds that a rather drastic alternative. "That's one of your actual suggestions? To drug us?"

Mick's intrigued. "What kind of drugs are we talking here?"

"You know, it's not sounding that bad to me," Jax mutters.

Sara actually considers it, too. At least if she's unconscious, she won't have to deal with the unease. Or the fear. Or the…memories.

Kendra's apparently chosen the most optimistic route and tries to convince them (and herself) this isn't so bad. "A few storms aren't going to hurt us. We'll be fine."

"I might believe you if those very storms weren't throwing the ship around like we're a tennis ball in the middle of a match," Jax complains as he tries to undo the restraints on his seat, but they won't release. "What the hell?"

Everyone watches him struggle for a few moments before Rip ventures, "Uh, did I forget to mention that Gideon recently reported that the chairs need new harness mechanisms? They can turn finicky if the ship is overly jostled."

"Finicky?" Kendra arches an eyebrow.

Rip looks rather uncharacteristically sheepish. "As in…they might stop working correctly."

"Now you tell us?!" Jax explodes, yanking ineffectually at the harness. It really is jammed. Sara quickly dismisses the vague notion she'd had of sitting out here with him for the duration.

"How cheaply was this ship made?" Leonard asks, somewhat concerned.

"We might have gone with a bidder on the lower end," Rip mutters.

"That's reassuring," Mick says, as he starts kicking the console and then one of the seats, seeing if he can dislodge them. When Rip watches him aghast, he shrugs. "Can't blame me, can you?"

"It just needs a little routine maintenance, that's all. Mr. Jefferson, put that on your to-do list for the next time we dock."

Jax can't believe that the captain has the audacity to give such an order when  _he's_ the one stuck in a chair. "Does it feel like the walls are closing in?" he asks, taking a few deep breaths (Sara's afraid he's going to start hyperventilating).

"Hold on," Rip tries to calm him as he enters his office and starts rummaging around. "We might have to…force you out."

"Force me out?" Jax gives up on trying to release the restraints and attempts to slide under them. It doesn't work at all. "Yeah, I'm definitely opting for sedation now!"

Sara tries to help him out of the seat, but Rip wasn't kidding – the mechanism is stuck fast and all the pulling in the world isn't going to unjam it. When Rip returns, she backs away from Jax's chair to give him room to work.

Mick decides to take advantage of Rip's distraction. "How about this – you don't have to reimburse me for my spilled bottle if you replace it. You just restocked your office, right?" He's already standing in the doorway of said office and Sara's mostly shocked that he appears to be waiting for permission to enter.

"Fine, whatever," Rip answers, not even looking back at him as Mick disappears and they hear him raiding the room.

"Len, Sara, you want anything?" Mick calls, as they both tell him they're fine.

Jax obviously isn't. "You don't offer anything to the poor guy literally locked into a chair in this tin can death trap of a ship? Thanks a lot!"

Mick reappears in the doorway of the office just as the ship lurches and he presses his arm against the doorframe without otherwise reacting – he doesn't seem bothered by the motion at all. (In fact, if Sara's not mistaken, his eyes increasingly light up every time the ship does that.) "Are you even old enough to drink, kid?"

"How long have we been working together and you don't even know my age?" Jax complains. " _Yes_ , I'm old enough to drink."

"You sure? 'Cause you look about 15."

"You think I forgot my own birthday?"

"I'm just saying – I don't care how old you are, but I don't want to deal with any of the others bitching to me about 'rules' and 'laws'. Like your other fiery half, for instance. And what's he always going on about? Brain development? Though, like I told him, I started drinking at age twelve and I turned out fine. In fact, I think it helped me."

" _Twelve_?" Sara can't have heard him right.

"Yeah, it's a little crazy," Mick admits. "I started later than a lot of my friends."

"Are we comparing disastrous childhoods now?" Leonard asks. "Because I think I could win this contest hands down."

Sara's mostly sad about the turn the conversation's taken and she's eager for a way to change topics. On that note, something Mick said makes her realize… "Hey, where is Stein, anyways?"

"The professor is sleeping in his quarters," Gideon informs them. "He's been experimenting with the gravity controls in his room and is protected from most of the instability that you are currently experiencing."

"You can't extend whatever he did out here?" Sara's found a new reason to be annoyed.

"That would necessitate turning off the ship's gravity altogether while Professor Stein inputs his equations to overwrite my central processor. The new protocol could take anywhere from a few hours to several days to implement. An easier solution would be for everyone to seek refuge in his room."

"He has the smallest room of any of us," Kendra points out. It had been a decision Stein made way back when they'd formed their team, insisting the size of his room mattered little to him. "I don't think we'd fit."

Sara has to agree it would never work, and not just because of the room's size. "All of us together for the night? Yeah, there's no way."

"I'd need to be much drunker than I already am," Mick says.

"Hey, any of you would be lucky to have me for the entire night," Len tells them. "Never mind  _all_ of you getting to enjoy my company at once."

"Yeah, we'd be kicking you out first," Jax mutters. Rip's still trying to undo his harness and has taken to slamming a wrench against the edge of it in frustration. The repeated clanging echoes throughout the room, drowning out the sounds of the storms.

"I vote to let the professor sleep through it, especially where he's been lucky enough that the storms haven't bothered him," Sara submits, as the others voice their agreement. It seems settled, then, that everyone is going to work things out for the rest of the night on their own.

Leonard considers what Gideon said about Stein's room – he understands if it's protected from most effects of the storm, but how has he not woken up even  _once_? "Are you sure he's just sleeping and not dead, Gideon?"

"He is very much alive," Gideon confirms.

When the others look at him in mute horror, Leonard holds up his hands in a 'can you blame me?' gesture. "I'm just saying, he's not exactly in his youth. Who knows what this storm might have done to him…like a shock to his system or something."

"You're one to talk about age since you're not far behind him," Kendra says smartly, as Leonard turns to her in mock outrage.

"Take that back!" he orders. "I'll have you know that I've been told I could pass for 30."

"When did someone last tell you that?" Jax challenges. "2005?"

When the others start laughing, Leonard scowls at them. "I hate you all."

"Pay them no mind, partner," Mick declares. "With age comes wisdom."

"As if you two are so much 'wiser' than me, or whatever," Jax scoffs.

"Who's the person stuck in a chair right now?" Mick asks pointedly, before heading back into Rip's office.

"This was purely bad luck," Jax insists, thrashing about in the chair – he nearly hits Rip in the head and the captain glares at him. "This could have happened to anyone!"

"And yet it didn't," Len says, smugly.

Sara doesn't have an issue with anything he's said, but sometimes she feels he has to be taken down a peg, if only to keep his ego in check. "As if you're impervious to accidents around here? I happen to recall  _someone_ getting stuck in the weapons room last week."

"Gideon locked me in there out of spite because I threatened to reboot her," Leonard alleges, "and everyone knows it."

"I do not have emotions and therefore do not operate under them," Gideon claims and Sara isn't sure whether to believe her or not – the AI sounds oddly as if she's enjoying this conversation.

"Liar," Len mutters.

"I cannot lie," Gideon insists.

"What if that, in itself, is a lie?" Ray asks, curious.

"It is not," Gideon replies.

"Would you tell us if it were?" Len asks.

Gideon hesitates a beat too long. "I do not understand the question."

"Aha! There's my proof. I'm onto you, Gideon."

Perhaps tellingly, Gideon doesn't reply.

"Gideon is programmed to tell the truth." Rip's annoyed tone reveals that he's been repeating the same argument to Leonard for quite some time. He  _finally_  frees the stuck mechanism on Jax's seat and the younger man jumps out of the chair as if it's on fire.

"The truth as she sees it," Leonard clarifies.

"Can't you ever accept that you're wrong?" Sara asks.

Len thinks about that before conceding, "Sure…if I ever were."

"You are so –" Sara breaks off when the ship abruptly reels. The motion sends her backwards and since there's nothing close enough to grab onto, she hits the floor hard. It's more embarrassing than anything else…not that most of the others are able to deal with the wave better than her. Rip desperately grabs the chair he just freed Jax from, Jax and Kendra clutch each other to stay upright, and Ray stumbles over to sit in one of the seats, though he doesn't strap himself in. Leonard and Mick are the least troubled – Len uses the back of the chair he's already holding to keep his balance, and Mick…well Mick just kind of sways with the ship and, if possible, his grin grows even wider. He doesn't drop even one of the five bottles he's 'liberated' from Rip's office.

"What were you saying, Lance?" Leonard asks. "I couldn't hear over the sound of you falling oh-so-gracefully to the floor."

She cautiously starts to get to her feet. "I was saying that –" The ship jerks again and she falls back to her knees. "God damn it!"

She's getting  _really_ sick of this and it's been what, twenty, thirty minutes? It's like a constant series of earthquake aftershocks with no end in sight. The worst part is how the intensity is constantly changing, from mild enough that it's a slight annoyance to strong enough that it'll easily pitch her into a wall if she isn't prepared for it. She contemplates staying on the floor for the rest of the night, but the thought of – oh God,  _ten_ hours on the cold floor of the bridge is not enticing whatsoever.

Len must see her struggle since he takes a few steps over to her (of course the ship stays put when  _he_ decides to move) and holds out his hand. Instead of insisting she's fine, she gratefully takes it. "You're a contrarian, Leonard. That's what I was trying to say."

"Uh huh, sure it was." His tone is disbelieving, but he smiles as he helps her to her feet.

"You can't prove otherwise." The floor vibrates and she grips his arm too tightly, expecting to lose her balance again. It's only a minor tremor, though, and she curses her overreaction. To her surprise, he doesn't make fun of her for it.

He places her firmly between himself and the nearest chair. "I can see you're having trouble, Lance."

"What are you doing? I'm perfectly capable of –" A crash of thunder drowns out the rest of her words as the ship rocks again (they must be in an exceptionally rough patch since this is the closest together the waves have come all night). Sara flinches and expects to be thrown across the room…but nothing happens. She doesn't go  _anywhere_  because Leonard had put his arms around her at the last second, taking hold of the seat in front of her and bracing them both, essentially insulating her from the effects of that wave.

Alright, maybe his methods have merit after all.

For the first time since she woke up, she actually feels okay…as if she's safe and the storms aren't out to get her, personally. It's nice to not be worried about getting seriously injured in a freak accident caused by (of all things) a temporal storm.

"I think the phrase you're looking for is 'thank you'," he says, when it's over. "I understand that it doesn't come naturally to you."

"Ha. Ha," she says dryly, tipping her head back to look up at him. " _Thank you_."

He smirks down at her. "Did that physically pain you to say?"

"It just might have," she admits, but it's only playful. She and Leonard actually get along pretty well after a year on this team. They're friendlier with each other than almost anyone else on the ship, which is saying a lot when they've  _all_ become pretty close…to the point that Sara's started thinking this is where she belongs. Like maybe it's  _always_ been where she was supposed to end up.

He lowers his voice, maybe so the others can't hear. "You know, I was kidding. You don't actually have to thank me for anything."

Her heart clenches in the way it always does when he says things like that. He cares about her – about all of them – so much. It pains her when other people don't realize it, choosing instead to believe that his acerbic, sarcastic exterior is reflective of the man he truly is. Sure, a lot of that is his own fault, a preemptive attempt at keeping other people away, but she sees right through him…she always has. And she's immensely grateful for his concern – for him in general, really. (In fact, she often wonders how long she would have lasted on this ship without him, especially in the early days.)

She leans back against him, hoping (as always) that he'll understand her silent thanks and appreciation. In answer, he moves his hands closer together on the chair in front of them, which means he's effectively holding her a little tighter.

Rip's taken Jax's former seat and is studying the mangled seatbelt mechanism with growing dismay. "Yes, well, I suppose we'll have to repair this –"

"You  _suppose_?" Kendra interrupts.

"– when we land." Rip sends her a stern look.

" _If_ we land," Mick says ominously, just to get a rise out of Jax. He's scanning the haul he took from their captain when Jax seizes a bottle at random.

"I earned this," Jax announces, in a tone that dares anyone to challenge him. When no one does, he takes a swig from the bottle and starts coughing and choking. "What is this?  _Fire_?"

"That's fireball whiskey," Mick tells him, "and it's not even that strong."

"Did Rip happen to have any nice rosés in there? Perhaps a white zinfandel?"

Mick's very close to appalled. "You make me ashamed of the American educational system. If nothing else, high school should have taught you which alcohols get you drunk the fastest." He eyes Jax almost accusingly. "Don't tell me you were the type who went to most of your classes."

Jax ignores his semi-lecture in favor of arguing, "Wines have a sweet, fruity taste. Who doesn't enjoy that?"

"Come on," Mick tells him, as he hands Jax a couple of the bottles, "I'll show you a much better form of sedation than what Gideon has in mind." The two of them leave, presumably off to try everything they've found (and in liberal enough amounts that in the morning they'll wish they hadn't).

Rip and Ray start discussing the nature of temporal storms and how much longer this batch might last. Rip thinks they could stretch out well into the late morning, but Ray thinks that since the waves are arriving faster (and stronger) than earlier, that means they're moving through the worst of it. He predicts four or five more hours, tops.

"Oh, is that all?" Leonard sighs, breath stirring her hair.

"I'll take it over ten," she mutters.

No sooner has she spoken than thunder crashes and the ship moves so violently that Sara swears it's about to tip them all onto the ceiling (which technically shouldn't be possible since there  _is_ no up or down in space and it's just the artificial gravity of the ship that makes them feel as if they're right side up). Nevertheless, the chaotic movement of the ship gets so intense that Sara wonders if they might actually be in danger despite what the others have claimed. Even with Leonard behind her, they both almost can't hold onto the chair. Kendra ends up on the floor, Rip and Ray soon joining her when they're thrown from their seats, neither having wanted to risk using the restraints after Jax.

Sara thinks the best course of action is probably to give up and get down on the floor with them, since sitting would be easier, but the shaking's crazy enough that she and Len would probably get hurt if they tried it right now. She struggles to remain standing as Leonard steps back with his left foot and moves his right forward, in between her feet, to anchor them both.

She knows this wave can't last forever, but while they're in it, it feels like a lifetime. All she can think about is the last moments before the  _Queen's Gambit_  sank beneath the waves. Suddenly she's back there, knowing she's going to die and there's nothing she can do about it.

It was the first time in her life that she'd felt completely and hopelessly alone. There have been other times since, but that time was the first, and thus it will always be seared into her mind as the most horrific.

Only there's a difference between then and now – right now she's  _not_ alone. She feels Leonard behind her, his arms still around her, closer than before. She looks down and sees their hands on the back of the chair, hers on the inside, his on the outside.

He's talking to her, too, and she only processes some of the words. Something about this being exciting and fun, like a roller coaster. She wants to hit him, or laugh, or scream. Maybe all of those at once.

Despite the intensity of what's happening around them, she's able to respond with, "Sure, it's like a ride – where we might die."

Somehow, Rip happens to hear her in between the loud thundering outside the ship. "We are not going to die!"

"No, we're not," Leonard agrees. They hold on for another minute until things gradually subside. The stillness and silence left in the aftermath makes the space around them feel eerily unnatural. Sara remains tense until Len relaxes behind her, carefully exhaling, and she takes it as a signal that she's safe to do the same. Despite the imminent threat being over, he doesn't let go of her.

(Yes, this time it's  _him_ that makes all the difference.)

She gives a fleeting thought to Mick and Jax, hoping they got through that wave without getting hurt…or losing all their precious alcohol.

Rip says (from the floor), "Perhaps it's not the best idea for us to be out here, lots of things we could injure ourselves on."

"You think,  _captain_?" Kendra grumbles, her tone sounding far too close to the way Leonard addresses Rip when he's extra-annoyed. She rubs her head where she'd hit the side of the console. Luckily it had been a glancing blow and wasn't serious.

"Is everyone okay?" Ray asks, as they all nod.

Rip makes it over to the captain's chair and pulls the harness down. "I guess I can risk this when the alternative is serious injury." He waves his wrench around. "Also, I have this to pry myself out if needed."

"You're staying on the bridge?" Ray questions. "Is that wise?"

"As the captain, it's my duty to monitor things until these storms blow over, and it's easiest to do that from out here. Does anyone want to keep me company?"

"Gotta get back to my room," Ray says, jumping to his feet and making a beeline for the exit.

Sara nods in enthusiastic agreement. "Good idea, I think I'll be heading back to bed, too."

"I'll stick around for a little while," Kendra says, taking one of the seats. She's been having thoughts about maybe wanting to become a captain someday. "You and Gideon can teach me more about these storms."

Len's the last to speak. "I think I'll stay out here, too."

"Really?" Rip sounds worried.

"No," Len shakes his head, much to their captain's relief, "not really. I'm going back to my room to sleep this entire nightmare away. No one wake me unless we really are under attack, and even then, only if you need me as a last resort."

He finally steps away from Sara, dropping his arms, and it stuns her how suddenly bereft she feels. Her world turns strangely cold as all her worries, fears, and past memories come rushing back – and it's crazy because that night is a decade behind her; she'd gotten past it long ago.

Hadn't she?

_Okay_ , she thinks, as the ship shakes around them again,  _maybe not_. 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Part 2 of 2! Sorry to anyone waiting for this, as it took me longer than I thought. And this is where I thank Tavyn, as usual – this wouldn't be what it was without her.

 

Sara's trying to convince herself that she'll be fine for the rest of the night, even if she doesn't quite believe it.

"Let's get going, Lance!" Leonard claps loudly next to her, startling her from her thoughts. "I don't have all night. Well, I _do_ have all night, but I'd rather not spend it out here waiting for the ship to finally knock me unconscious. Plus, look at the company I'd have to keep."

Rip's glare toward their wayward thief is equal parts disapproval and exasperation, but he doesn't comment.

Sara turns to Leonard, assessing his possible motives for staying behind. "Are you…waiting for me?"

"What other Lance could I be talking to? You're the only one onboard, right?" His voice drops when he murmurs, "Luckily for me."

"What's wrong with my family, Leonard?" she demands, sounding much more ominous than she actually feels. He's spent time with her parents, Laurel, and other relatives many times over the past year, generally when their team is visiting home and he claims he has nothing better to do – which obviously means that he loves to randomly show up at her house and her family's events as if he belongs there.

"Alright," he relents, "I'll admit that your mother is lovely and quite charming when she wants to be. But your father's insane – which actually makes him a perfect match for your step-mother. Oh, and your sister is downright _terrifying_."

"Which one, Laurel or my step-sister?" She's curious about his genuine opinion when he's not joking. The ship jerks sharply to one side and Leonard grabs her arm, keeping her steady.

"Does it matter? Either of them could ruin my life if they wanted. In much different ways."

"Are they more terrifying than me?"

"Obviously! With you I know the animosity's an act."

"Is it?" She tries to sound threatening, but he (infuriatingly) only laughs.

"Please, we both know there's no real danger of you shanking me in my sleep, like Laurel's heavily implied she'd have no problem doing. Or erasing my electronic identity from existence forever – that was Felicity."

"What have you been doing that would warrant that kind of retaliation?"

"Nothing!" he argues, raising his voice both because he's affronted and because the rumbling around the ship is getting louder. "I'm just my normal self and they seem to –"

"I don't mean to interrupt," Kendra blatantly interrupts, "but if you're acting like your 'normal' self around her family, then it's pretty obvious what they think."

When Leonard and Sara only seem _more_ confused, Kendra sighs heavily and looks over at Rip. For the first time tonight, their captain looks highly entertained and gestures for Kendra to keep talking, since he has no intention of helping her.

"What?" Sara insists.

Kendra makes sure to speak clearly and concisely so the two of them understand (though it might still be a lost cause): "They. Think. You're. Together."

Sara and Leonard look at each other, then at Kendra, then back at each other – and start laughing.

"No, there's no way that…" Len slowly trails off, laughter fading.

"Yeah, they can't possibly…" Sara thinks about it, _really_ thinks about it. He's shown up to her house at least a half dozen times now. Or has it been more than that? Her visits home all kind of blend together, and besides that, she and Leonard are only ever friendly toward each other. Or are they _too_ friendly? She turns to Len, stepping into his personal space to point at him accusingly. "This is all your fault!"

He easily ignores her, seemingly lost in thought. "Wait…this might explain why your father is always vaguely threatening to kill me. But still, I don't know why anyone would think we're dating –"

"Because you _are_!" Kendra almost yells.

Sara puts her hands on her hips. "I think we'd know."

"Yeah, we all thought you'd know by now, too," Rip says, wryly.

"You're always with each other," Kendra says, shooting the captain a quelling look.

"Not…always," Leonard insists. "I mean, is it my fault that she follows me around?" He pretends not to hear Sara's huff of annoyance.

"You wish," she throws back, "it's more that I can't get rid of you unless I undertake evasive maneuvers."

The storms have subsided somewhat, but she can hear them raging in the distance and moves toward the wall by Rip's office in case she'll need it for support.

Leonard's not buying her assertion that other people's wrong assumptions are mostly _his_ fault. "We sleep in separate rooms at night," he says, as if that proves his point that they're not a couple. "Despite how many times I've told Sara I could give her the best night of her life."

"Oh please," she scoffs, unwilling to let him get away with such a claim, "if anyone would be having the best night of their life, it'd be _you_ thanks to _me_!"

When Rip and Kendra just stare at them, Leonard replays their conversation. "This kind of thing doesn't help our case, does it?"

"This is what we're talking about," Kendra confirms, trying to sound stern, but she's smiling too much for it to work.

"That's just the way we are," Leonard explains, glancing at Sara for confirmation, but her face remains frustratingly blank as she leans back against the wall. "It's all in good fun."

"Is that right?" Kendra asks. "Then why don't you ever joke that way with me?"

"Do you _want_ me to?" He's starting to sound smug. "Is that what this is about?"

Rip mutters something mostly unintelligible but Sara thinks she hears the words 'useless' and 'maddening' in there.

"Never mind," Kendra sighs, deciding to give up. "We're all wrong. You're obviously just weirdly close friends."

Leonard isn't sure he's happy with that summation, either.

"Yes, we're _friends_ ," Sara emphasizes, wondering why she sounds slightly bitter. She turns to Leonard, but he's not looking at her. "Right?"

"Are you asking me?" he demands, and the sudden intensity in his tone startles her.

"No, I'm –" The lights go out completely when the ship lurches. Luckily, the force of it is such that it pushes her further back into the wall behind her – not so luckily for Leonard, he has nothing to hold onto and she knows she's directly in his path. She quickly puts her arms up and waits for him to crash into her, but it never happens. The lights return and she sees that he was able to stop their collision by throwing his hands out to either side of her on the wall.

She makes an effort to relax. "That would have hurt."

He leans closer to her for the briefest of moments. "I told you it wasn't safe out here."

"I don't know," she says, glancing up at him. "It doesn't seem so bad at the moment."

He's about to push himself away from the wall (and her), but pauses to search her eyes. "Is that right?"

In answer, she smiles at him, even though she knows it's probably too subdued to convey what she intends; it's one of those rare times that he doesn't smile back.

"Oh yes, we're all seeing things." Kendra's voice causes them to break apart. "It's definitely _us_."

Len and Sara move away from each other, exchanging a look and deciding by mutual silent agreement that it's easier to leave the bridge than argue with Kendra any further. They start down the corridor, heading for their rooms.

"All that stuff about the two of us…" Sara hesitates, "do you think there's a chance Kendra's right? That our families think we're a couple?"

"Maybe, but who cares?" He shrugs, though he still sounds…off to her. "It's not anyone's business, and besides, it's not like they need an excuse to give us a hard time. We should just forget it."

That's the thing, though – she doesn't know if she _wants_ to forget it. But _he_ probably does if he'd suggested it…right?

"You okay?" he asks, when they reach the hallway that houses their rooms.

"Sure," she tells him, inwardly wincing at the forced cheerfulness she hears in her voice. "I'm fine. Just tired. And I doubt I'll be able to sleep tonight."

"You could get drunk with Mick and Jax," he suggests, trying not to smile.

"Yes, being drunk will surely help my mental state. And my reflexes."

"Always does for me," he quips, as they stop outside their quarters.

"I suppose if I'm blacked out then I won't remember any of this in the morning," she says. It's a tempting thought.

"And what a shame that would be," he replies, as they listen to an extremely loud crack of thunder. Time waves slamming into each other – it's as awe-inducing as it is terrifying.

As the sound recedes, she bids him good night and turns to her room. When the doors slide open, she pauses in the doorway, studying the dim interior; all she can see is the cabin on the _Queen's Gambit_.

The place where she should have died.

And for all intents and purposes, she _had_ died, hadn't she? The Sara Lance who'd returned from that trip was certainly not the Sara Lance who'd left with Oliver Queen.

"What is it?" Len asks, stepping up behind her shoulder and looking into the empty room.

"Nothing," she says, shaking off the feeling and forcing herself to take a step forward. She wonders, during her time on the Waverider, if she's ever wanted to be alone _less_ than she does right now.

Leonard must be putting his psychic skills to good use tonight. "I know I mentioned it earlier, but the offer always stands that you can spend the night with me, Lance."

She turns around to face him, hoping her look contains enough censure. (It might not, since his idea is so appealing.) "That's very generous of you."

"Isn't it?" he asks, in a self-congratulatory manner. "Really, I've been telling you this from day one. It would save space and let Rip turn your room into a second gym or something."

"I'm surprised you don't want to turn it into your own personal lounge."

His eyes practically light up as he considers the possibilities. "That's even better, we should collaborate on ideas more; look at the things we come up with! Sometimes I think we should be the ones running this ship."

"If you were in charge of _anything_ around here, you'd wreck it within three days."

"Yeah," he leans into her personal space, grinning, "but think of the fun we'd have until then."

She shakes her head, pushing him back, and feels a twinge in her arm that she doesn't think much of until –

"You going to bandage that?"

She automatically glances down to see the area around her right elbow is covered with some kind of – wait, that's _blood_. She looks closer, realizing some of the skin has scraped away, but thankfully it's not bleeding too badly. She hadn't even felt it, but now it's starting to sting. She replays the events of the night and realizes it must have happened when she fell to the floor on the bridge.

Leonard gestures to his room. "Come on in, it's your lucky night. I recently stole a lot of supplies from the Med Bay because I was sick of going there for every injury."

She follows him into his room, stopping just inside the doors to watch as he opens one of the cupboards and then turns around with a literal armful of first aid supplies – rolls of bandages, rubbing alcohol, first aid creams, and a variety of other boxes and bottles. "Leonard, it's not 'stealing' if you're allowed to take whatever you want."

"Calling it 'stealing' makes me feel better about my life choices," he explains as he drops everything onto his bed and takes a seat on the edge of it. "Have your pick."

"What'd you do, empty every drawer?"

"Rip can afford to restock. We use Gideon's fancy healing lasers a lot anyways. We can go do that right now if you'd prefer?"

She strongly considers it until the rolling of the ship reminds her that they're in the midst of a batch of treacherous and unforgiving storms. "No, that's fine. I don't need any lasers pointed at me when the ship suddenly starts rocking."

Instead of replying, Len tells Gideon to lock the doors and Sara has a second to wonder about his sudden order before the ship's movement causes her to fall back against those doors and the lock prevents them from opening automatically. She winces as she hits her already injured elbow against the metal. She's beginning to wonder what shape she's going to be in by the time the night is over.

"You aren't _actually_ psychic, are you?" she asks him, warily.

"What?"

"Nothing," she mumbles. "Never mind."

"Why don't you go wash that?"

"Let's see if I can get to the bathroom without suffering a concussion," she says, annoyed, as she makes her way across the room. At least the storm cooperates for the moment, leaving them in peace long enough that she's able to clean the scrape on her arm.

Unfortunately, she realizes she's jinxed herself with her optimistic thoughts when the ship jolts and tips at an odd angle and she goes tumbling into the open shower stall. The shower door slams shut behind her. "Son of a bitch!"

Leonard steps into the room. "What's all the banging around in here?" He looks over to find her behind the clear door of the shower. "Most people take their clothes off first, but hey, to each their own. I guess."

She just glares at him through the door.

"Hey," he begins, "do you think it's the best idea to take a shower when the ship's –"

She kicks open the stall door and he has to jump back so that she doesn't take him out in the process. "Obviously, I didn't come in here on purpose." She stalks past him and out into the bedroom, unreasonably tired, irritated, and in pain. And that's on top of her other worries about the storm and her horrifying flashbacks to her time on the _Gambit_.

"You've done stranger things," he accuses as he follows her.

"Name one," she snaps, falling back onto the bed.

"You turn me down every time I proposition you."

She really doesn't want to smile (on principle) but she can't help it. "That's for your benefit. You'd never be the same."

"I wish you'd let _me_ be the judge of that."

She means to answer him, but something's been nudging at the corner of her mind since she stepped into his room, and she finally realizes what it is. "What the hell did you do in here? Is that a _fridge_?"

"What?" Len glances over, as if just noticing the appliance situated between newly built-in bookshelves.

"The bed's different, too! It wasn't like this a week ago." She leans up a little on her uninjured arm to get a better look around. The bed's facing the same direction as hers (length-wise along the wall), but it stretches out much further in width than hers does. It's apparently been redesigned to accommodate more than one person comfortably.

"Oh, right," he says. "I had some upgrades performed when we were docked in 2025."

"Does Rip know about these upgrades?"

Len settles himself next to her on the bed and grabs a box from the pile of medical supplies. "Considering that he was out with the rest of you at the time? No. But he won't care since it drastically increases the resale value of this thing…or at least that's what I'm going to claim if he ever asks."

"Your bed is much larger than it originally was," she points out, as if he isn't aware of what he's changed in his own room.

He looks at her over the top of the bandage he's tearing open. "I like to sprawl."

"Uh huh. And I'm sure it's just a coincidence that this bed can now sleep three…or four?"

" _Four_?" He sounds incredibly pleased at that. "You have a very flattering opinion of me, Lance."

"'Flattering' isn't the word I'd use," she says, dryly.

"Well, I'd be hard-pressed to think of another."

She wouldn't, but she's distracted from offering suggestions when he reaches for her arm and she has to hold it up for him to examine. She flinches when he presses his fingers to either side of the abrasion, more in anticipation of pain than any pain itself, and he frowns at her.

"Sorry," she mutters.

"Don't apologize to me." He sifts through the rest of the supplies for who knows what.

She wonders how he managed to change the room so drastically without anyone noticing. "I know you didn't do this yourself, so what, you just invited a random crew of people onboard to renovate?"

"You say that like it's impossible." He liberally pours rubbing alcohol on her injury and she wrenches her arm away in pain. "Yeah, that might hurt."

"Little late," she seethes.

"Want to hit me?"

"Always."

"Go ahead if it'll make you feel better," he offers, and then presses a kiss to the unmarred skin of her arm, right next to where she's scraped it. The move surprises her enough that she forgets to breathe for a moment. "It's easier if you're not anticipating the pain," he adds, quiet enough that she almost doesn't hear him.

"It's fine," she manages to say, watching as he takes the gauze bandage he's just opened and wraps it around her arm before securing it with medical tape. It's a good call, because any size band-aid would probably just fall off due to the necessity of bending her arm. "You don't have to take care of me. I can do it myself."

"I know," he tells her, gathering up all the leftover supplies and tossing them into a cabinet next to the bed, making sure to shut it firmly so the shaking of the ship doesn't end up dislodging anything.

"So why are you always the first in line to help me?" she asks, as if some part of her, deep down, doesn't already know the answer.

"Because I…" he stops, then continues, "I want to."

"Okay," she accepts, wondering what he might have said if he hadn't censored himself. She looks to the door, thinking she should probably leave. She gets as far as putting her legs over the side of the bed when thunder cracks loudly around them and she jumps slightly – it's enough for him to notice.

He puts his hand on her arm, but he isn't holding her there. "As much as I admire your fiercely independent personality traits, tonight they'll inevitably lead to you suffering alone. And you don't have to."

"I'm not suffering," she insists, looking over at him.

His expression betrays his thoughts – he knows she's lying, but he'll never try and force her to stay.

Oddly enough, that's what makes her _want_ to stay. (She wonders if maybe that's what he's been aiming for all along.)

"Alright, I won't leave yet," she gives in. "I'll wait until the storm ends."

"Deal," he says, lying down sort-of diagonally, purposely only leaving room for her between himself and the wall.

She climbs over him with as chastising of a look as she can manage and takes the spot he's left. He merely smiles at her, and if she didn't know better, she'd believe the innocence on his face (but Leonard Snart's not _capable_ of innocent). When the ship mildly shakes again, she realizes, with immense relief, that she can't actually go anywhere. With the wall on one side of her and him on the other, she's no longer at risk for being thrown anywhere, never mind out of bed.

As they lie there in comfortable silence, her thoughts drift to something else she's curious about. "What explanation did you come up with when you were renovating? Did you tell them it's a top secret aircraft? Don't tell me you stole some memory pills to make them forget they were here."

"Nothing so dramatic," he says. He's acquired a bouncy ball from who knows where and is mindlessly throwing it up in the air and catching it, over and over again. "I told them it's a television set."

"Seriously? They bought that?"

"Well, it's far more believable than a time traveling ship, isn't it?"

"I guess. Barely." She looks around. "It doesn't seem like a real set, though. There's no missing wall for the cameras and crew."

"Yeah, well, what contractor is thinking about that? Besides, I'm extremely convincing when I stick to a lie. They also rushed to accommodate me and complete the work in record time – once they heard I was the star, of course."

"You told them _you_ were the star?"

"Who else would it be?"

"There are eight of us on this ship," she reminds him.

"Yeah, and my question stands."

"I'm glad your ego hasn't taken a hit."

He shrugs, as if the answer is self-evident. "You think anyone would watch us for _Palmer_?"

Sara considers that. "I'm sure he'd have his fans."

"Or Hunter?" He throws the ball too hard and it hits the ceiling, coming back down with equal force. "Please."

"Sorry that not everyone can be as…dynamic as you."

"Ooh, 'dynamic'. Excellent description. Maybe we'll give you a writing credit."

She swats him lightly which probably loses its effect when she uses the motion as an excuse to move closer to his side and then stay there. "I think we're more of an ensemble cast."

"If it makes you feel better, I told them I had a gorgeous co-star."

Sara can't help smiling at that. "Did you now?"

"She was recently discovered while serving coffee in Central City. A mere barista, she had no idea how drastically her life was about to change when –"

She grabs the ball mid-air before he can catch it. "Okay, very funny. I still can't believe you'd consider yourself the star…though maybe I should know better by now."

He holds his hand out in silent request, but instead of giving it to him, she throws the ball back up for him to catch on the way down. They start tossing it back and forth to each other that way, and she almost loses it when the ship shudders and changes positions when the ball is in mid-air – Leonard quickly sits up to catch it before it can end up across the room.

"You have a point about there being eight of us," he says. "That's probably too many. We'd have to narrow the focus. I bet people would like watching me and Mick." The more he thinks about it, the more he likes it. "Yeah…just the two of us, setting fires, freezing people, planning heists – that'd be an excellent show."

 _Of course_ he'd suggest that. "The Adventures of Captain Cold and Heatwave?"

He lies back down, giving her a moment to automatically settle against his side again. "Now you're thinking like a writer."

She can't hide her skepticism. "I'm pretty sure a show about the two of you would go off the rails pretty quickly."

"Well, obviously – that's why it'd be so great! Don't you know anything about network TV, Lance? It's all about thrilling, high-stakes entertainment."

"I haven't had much time to watch TV the past year…or ten."

"Why, you been busy or something?" he asks, archly.

She tries to sound scolding, but she's laughing when she mumbles into his shoulder, "Or something."

"Here's all you need to know: the crazier your show, the better. Gotta lure in those viewers."

"Alright, then I revise my opinion – you and Mick would bring just the right level of insanity. It'd definitely be a hit."

He thinks about the possibilities because he honestly can't imagine any show (or version of his life, real or pretend) without her in it. "You could join as our sidekick."

She levers herself up to lean over him and warn, "I'm no one's sidekick."

He gazes up at her, as if considering. "How about love interest?"

"What, for _both_ of you?"

He pauses momentarily. "First, I love that _you_ are the one who'd come up with such an idea. Second, I'm too selfish for that to ever work."

"Aw, Leonard," she teases, "that's sweet that you wouldn't want to share me."

"Not you," he clarifies, "Mick." He enjoys the way her face changes, playful smile giving way to confusion and dismay before she heaves a long-suffering sigh, as if _no one_ has to deal with what she does when it comes to him.

She's not sure where to begin. "You two…I don't even know."

"I can't have you taking his time away from me," he replies, and perhaps the most humorous part to her is the sincerity in his voice. (As if she'd ever be able to get in the way of the bond they share.)

"I don't think you have anything to worry about."

"Good," he says succinctly, as she rolls her eyes. "And you should reconsider the sidekick offer, because if you don't take it, there are plenty of others on this ship who'd jump at the chance. I bet Ray would be interested; he's into technology and all that jazz, he could be like the Q to my James Bond."

She laughs so hard at his suggestion that her next words are barely coherent. "Wait, now you're James Bond?"

"If the role fits…who am I to say otherwise?"

Sometimes she honestly can't tell if he's being serious or trying to get a reaction out of her (and bizarrely enough, she actually thinks that this time he's serious). "There's no way Ray would want to be your sidekick."

"I beg to differ. Let's ask." Len whips the ball against the wall that his room shares with Ray's, expertly getting it to bounce right back into his hands. "Hey, Palmer, you awake in there? Get in here!"

Len tells Gideon to unlock the doors and ten seconds later they open to reveal Ray. He's looking far too cheerful and eager for 2:36 am. He stops short near the door when he sees the two of them in bed together and Sara sits up, grabbing Len's arm to force him to do the same.

"Hey guys," Ray greets them. "What's going on in here? Slumber party?"

"Nostalgic for the days of your youth, Raymond?"

The attempt at an insult doesn't bother Ray. "Not that I'm admitting anything, but I could expertly braid your hair if you wanted, Sara."

She actually doesn't doubt it. "I just might take you up on that."

Leonard's look to her merely says, _Of course you would_.

Ray's noticed the changes to Leonard's room. "Hey, why is your bed so much bigger than mine?"

"Palmer –"

Ray jumps on the end of it, the movement causing Leonard and Sara to almost tip over. "You could fit like four or five people on this!"

"Right?" Sara asks, nudging Leonard to slide over to give Ray more room, "I told him it was way too big. Who needs this much space?"

The two of them start talking about how Leonard's become used to a 'life of excess' which they attribute to his time living as a well-to-do thief. In his efforts to defend himself, Leonard completely forgets why he called Ray into the room. Sara and Ray take great delight in teaming up to tear his arguments apart, so he eventually gives up in favor of lying back down.

He can't help letting his eyes close; if he pretends hard enough, he can almost believe the movement of the ship is intentionally meant to lull them to sleep – things have quieted down a lot from the level they were at earlier tonight.

The universe must hear that thought and decide to prove him wrong, since the now-familiar tremors return, building in intensity enough that Ray and Sara stop talking for a moment. Since Len's listening closely, he notices the hitch in Sara's breathing that indicates she's started consciously regulating it to try and remain calm. He doesn't have to look to recall that she's sitting with her back to him, leaning with her hands on the bed behind her. He reaches out to put his hand on one of hers in quiet reassurance. When her breathing regains its normal rhythm, he lets himself relax, too.

When he opens his eyes again to take in the scene before him, he blinks in disbelief. Is Palmer actually _braiding her hair_?

His face must betray his confusion, since Sara smiles at him as Ray ties off the end of a double French braid. "Did you fall asleep? You didn't miss much, Ray just braided my hair in less than fifteen minutes."

 _Had_ he fallen asleep right next to them? There are no words to describe how horrifying that fact (or well, _any_ _of this_ ) is to him. Strangely, the only question he thinks to ask Ray is, "Do you carry elastics around with you?"

Ray shrugs, which isn't an answer. "Do you not?"

Leonard wonders if he's actually dreaming and pinches the back of his hand. "Not usually, no."

"I'm still impressed by what you've done in here," Ray tells him. "I was just saying to Sara that we should call in the others, see how many people we can fit on –"

"Palmer!" Leonard raises his voice to get the other man's attention – he's just remembered (thankfully) why he wanted to talk to Ray in the first place. "I have a proposition for you."

Ray's expression freezes somewhere between cautiously flattered and utterly shocked. "Wow, guys. I mean, I'm _so_ humbled that you would ask, but I don't think –"

"What?" Len's confused. He hasn't asked him anything yet…has he? He's actually disoriented enough that he has to think back to be sure.

Sara momentarily debates intervening before deciding to let this play out to its natural, hilarious conclusion.

Ray's subtly inching back toward the edge of the bed, as if he thinks getting up too quickly will unnecessarily offend them. "Um, so I love you both, you guys know that right? But I think maybe we all love each other in different kinds of ways. Not that there's anything wrong with that! You know what, I'm going to just…"

Leonard sits up, frowning at him, and Ray instantly stops moving. "Are you having a stroke, Palmer?"

"I can't…look, I respect you guys too much as friends to risk jeopardizing anything that way," Ray's rambling. "Plus, it'd be weird. Don't you think it'd be weird?"

"What's wrong with 'weird'?" Sara can't resist asking, as Ray looks over at her – and is that actual fear in his eyes?

"I think _you're_ weird," Len tells Ray. "And I still don't know what's going on."

"I don't want to get in the middle of your relationship." Ray decides a joke might ease his unbearably building anxiety. "What if she liked me better than you? What then? I'd be responsible for your break-up. I can't have that on my conscience!"

"Relationship? Break-up?" Leonard finally puts together the pieces of what Ray thinks – and what he believes they're asking of him. It distresses Leonard in entirely new ways he'd never thought possible. "No, _no_ , Palmer. Stop talking. Forever."

Sara tamps down on her laughter long enough to reassure Ray, "That's not what he wanted to ask."

Ray's shoulders slump in visible relief. "Great, I was worried – I mean flattered, too! – but also worried."

"No need to worry, Raymond," Leonard reiterates. "You wouldn't even make the list."

The wheels seem to be turning in Ray's head and he suddenly becomes accusing, "Wait a minute, there's a list? And I'm not on it? Am I not _good enough_ for you?"

"There's no list," Sara tells him, shooting Leonard a ' _See what you've done?_ ' look.

Ray doesn't believe her. "But he said –"

"Raymond," Leonard talks over him – he has to get out of this conversation before he loses his mind. "My actual question was: when this is all over and we return home, if we sold the rights to this story to be turned into a television show, would you like to be the techno-genius-hacker sidekick?"

Ray's obviously mollified – Sara thinks his eyes couldn't possibly get any brighter than they do in that moment. " _Genius_? I like the sound of that. I'm guessing I'd get to develop weapons and stuff? Sounds like my input would be crucial."

"Sure," Len easily agrees, "crucial enough that we'll keep you around, but if we need a 'shocking' death during sweeps…I can't make you any promises."

Ray nods, already thinking of story lines he'd like to include. "I'd definitely take a chance on the role – I think I could bring a lot to it. Now, I'm sure I'd get a girlfriend, right?" He slants his gaze at Sara. "Lots of long, cold nights in the lab…a man gets lonely."

"Dream on, Ray," Sara says breezily. "I'm not going to be relegated to the role of anyone's girlfriend. If anything, _I'd_ be the one who gets a new love interest each week."

"Well," Ray allows, "since you're a little full of yourself anyways, I don't know if a job as an actress is the best option for –" He scrambles off the bed when she grabs the bouncy ball Leonard had discarded and launches it in his general direction. He's not fast enough and it hits him squarely on the shoulder.

"Is this any way to treat your fellow cast members?" Ray demands, jumping around over-dramatically in pain.

Leonard loudly whispers, "We'll probably demote her from series regular to part-time."

Sara's offended. "Part-time? You'd be lucky if I agreed to be on your stupid show even once!"

He looks her over. "Keep it up and you'll only be getting non-speaking roles."

"Yeah, make her a background extra," Ray quickly agrees. "That'll teach her."

"It'd be the rest of us that benefited," Len says, thoughtfully. "No more shrill –" When she lunges over to try and attack him, he follows Ray's lead and jumps off the bed to escape her.

"No need to resort to violence," Ray tsks, as if disappointed, and turns to Leonard. "She might be a little too unstable for –"

"Get out!" Sara yells.

Ray takes that as his cue to leave. "Good luck with the rest of your night," he tells Leonard, hint of laughter in his voice, as he exits the room.

Leonard leans against the wall near his bed. "Are you going to rein in your murderous impulses?"

"For you, probably not."

"Eh, I've survived far worse," he jokes, getting back on the bed despite her unwelcoming demeanor. (He must see it as the front it always is…at least when it comes to him.) "Maybe we should try to sleep. By the time we wake up, we should be out of the storms."

She nods in agreement since it's as good an idea as any. Leonard asks Gideon to turn the lights out and when the room plunges into darkness, Sara freezes at the suddenness of it. The dark has never bothered her, in and of itself, but coupled with the storms outside, and the suddenly unstable ship…she's having a few issues with her resurfacing memories.

_Blackness. Water rising. She can't breathe. And she's going to die, she's going to die right here, right now, and she's too young, but the world doesn't care about things like 'too young' and –_

Sara struggles to sit up at the edge of the bed _–_ it's as difficult as trying to stay above water.

She dimly hears Leonard telling Gideon to turn the lights back on, but it doesn't fix anything. The memories haven't been erased and the storms don't disappear.

She knows his eyes are on her, but he says nothing, and she wonders if he's waiting for her to speak.

Some nights, she's right back there. She often has the same recurring dream: she drowns (torturously slow), there's a short moment of nothingness, and then she's alive again, doomed to repeat the process. The dream (nightmare) will continue on a loop until she can finally force herself awake.

 _She remembers the water swirling around her, building in the cabin – no, it shouldn't be in the cabin, why is it in the cabin! – and there's no easy way out. Her last option is to hold her breath and sink below the surface of the water, hope she can find a window or doorway to swim through and escape the sinking ship that's trying to take her down with it. She has to venture further into the depths, into nothingness, and it might very well be the end of everything, but she has no choice – the water's going to take her whether she chooses to go or not. And her last thought before she loses consciousness is always,_ always _, 'maybe this is what I deserve.'_

"Sometimes I feel like I'm still drowning," she says, unable to keep the words in any longer. (Why is she telling him this? And why can't she stop?) "It's like I never got off that boat."

"Sara." She feels him sit up behind her and she can't look at him.

"I should have died out there."

"Sara," he repeats, more firmly.

"There's no reason that I lived. And then the universe spun back around to correct itself, and it _did_ kill me that time, but I came back. How did I come back? _Again_?" Now she does turn to face him, wanting, needing to know: "Am I the luckiest person in the world or just…the most cursed?"

Her question shocks him; she can tell by the way he reels back. "You think you're _cursed_?"

"I think I'm living on time that doesn't belong to me."

When he speaks again, his voice is low and fierce. "I'm about as far from religious as you can get, Lance, but in my opinion, the fact that you're alive and not at the bottom of the ocean – or in the ground in Star City – is because you're _supposed_ to be here. There's a reason. A hundred reasons."

She shakes her head slightly, too caught up in her past fears and doubts – too caught in the worry that the world just might be biding its time before it ends her once and for all. "Like what?"

He doesn't even have to think about it. "How about every stranger you've saved, or every person that loves you, or every day that you get here with us? How can you really be so unsure of your worth to the world? To us?"

She's awed, not only that he thinks that of her, but that he's so easily able to put it into words for her. "I could say the same about you a lot of the time," she returns. "You never seem to truly recognize your worth."

When he touches her shoulder, the pressure is more insistent than before; she acquiesces to the silent request, lying back down in the spot she'd just vacated. "We can't do this without you," he swears.

"Yes, you –"

"No, I _can't_." The lights go out again and this time they don't come back on.

" _You_ can't?" she echoes, emphasis letting him realize how his wording has changed. She focuses on his presence next to her so she doesn't have to think about the unnatural darkness or churning water or how close she'd come (more than once) to dying before she'd truly had a chance to live. She might have missed this… _him_. And the thought causes such sudden agony that she blindly reaches out for him, finding his arm, and he responds by pulling her closer.

"Let me rephrase," he says, "I wouldn't want to keep doing this without you."

"But you would," she says, insistent. "Tell me you would keep going if I weren't here."

She hears him sigh before he finally replies, "Fine. But you better never even _think_ about making me do it."

"Same to you," she responds, quietly. That's something she's never going to think about, if she can help it.

They're silent for a few moments, lying in the dark, until he murmurs, "I know what you're going through."

"How?" It's a simple question, but she wants an answer. Had he read the emotions on her face? Had he researched her life extensively? Had he –

"I've lived my share of misery, too," he whispers, and for some reason the quiet truth of his words makes her want to cry. She manages not to…but it's a close thing.

She's beginning to think that maybe… "Leonard, is it possible that Kendra was right? What if, this whole time, we've been –" Suddenly, it feels like the floor drops out from underneath them, as if the ship is falling into a black hole, and they're suspended in mid-air for a half-second before landing back on the bed. The slight tilting of the ship means that she ends up pressed against the wall behind her and Leonard lands half on top of her.

"That worked out perfectly," he says, and though she can't see him in the dark, she can _hear_ that he's smirking at her.

"If space and the universe and _temporal storms_ are somehow on your side –"

"Not my side," he corrects her, " _our_ side. And for once, I don't care that this will prove them right."

He kisses her before she can ask what he means. Oh. Of _course_. It's somehow both a surprise and not. She should have seen it coming, and yet at the same time, she'd had no idea (or _told herself_ she'd had no idea?) that this was anything approaching a real possibility. Now that she suddenly has more, she has no idea how they've gone without this all along. What have they been _doing_ wasting so much time? Especially when they spend their days taking the kinds of risks that mean more time is never a guarantee?

She kisses him back, letting the waves of emotion wash over her – passion and need and desire, and it's both brand new and comfortably familiar. In the depths of that feeling from him, there's a hint of something more, like he's holding back just enough to try and keep her from seeing…

She moves to kiss his neck and then mouths ' _I love you, too_ ' against his skin. When he freezes against her, she takes it as confirmation that he recognized the words.

The lights return and even though they're dim, they both blink at the suddenness of it.

He doesn't move. "You…"

"It's okay," she says. "I already know. You don't have to –"

"Iloveyou," he says, the rush of it turning the sentiment into one word. After a few seconds (maybe he's waiting to see if the world ends?) he says it again, slower this time: "I love you."

Kendra and Rip were right. Her family was (apparently) right. Maybe _everyone_ they knew had thought the same and they were _all_ right. For the first time, she allows herself to truly feel what she wants to without any excuses to explain it away.

With that knowledge, though, comes an entirely new set of worries. "Len…what's to keep this from turning into a disaster?" (Like nearly every other relationship that both of them have seen over the course of their lives, all of them following the same inevitable pattern of forming from an initial spark that eventually burns out or goes up in flames.)

"We won't let it," he tells her calmly.

"You think it's that simple?"

"With us?" He searches her eyes, thoughtfully. "No, probably not. But I don't care – if we become a disaster, so be it."

" _That's_ your solution?"

"I'd rather fall apart with you than stay in one piece on my own."

"That's twisted, but weirdly romantic."

He leans closer to whisper, "And no matter what happens to us, I'm not letting you go – not ever."

"You sound borderline crazy right now," she warns, but she can't stop smiling.

"Only borderline?" He sounds thoughtful. "I'll have to work on my tone so that no one has any doubts that I've gone fully over the edge."

She's too overwhelmed, so she kisses him in response; she thinks that no matter how this plays out, it'll work.

Because they'll _make_ it work.

Neither of them notice the storms outside for the rest of the night.


End file.
